We are sitting at 13 hours away from the new year. EEEEK!! We are having some of my husband's family over tonight for a relaxing night of fun games and junk food. What part of that doesn't sound amazing, right?

I have a ton of stuff to put away since we spent 4 days at my parent's house with my sister, her husband & their 2 kids. When we got home Saturday we plopped everything in the living room. That night I came down with some crazy stomach bug that has kept me mostly in bed since then. Now, today, with 15 people coming over tonight, I haven't a lot of Christmas stuff to put away!

So the past couple of years, the Christmas cards that we've gotten have ended up in a stack on the coffee table or somewhere during the Christmas season. What a terrible way to display them when people spend so much time putting them together and mailing them out.

I saw a pin on pinterest several months ago and just couldn't resist making it this year. A great way to showcase all the awesome cards from the people we love the most! The original post was just to use it as a decoration to hang it on the wall, but I thought it was a great idea to pin cards to.

First you will need: a foam board, I got mine from good ol' Wal-Mart, 3/4 of a yard of any material that floats your boat, hot glue & gun, ribbon or rafia to hang it with & push pins.

I glued one end down and then pulled the other end as tight as possible and glued it down. Then I folded to corners down like I was wrapping a present so the material wouldn't bunch up. Then glued one side down and stretched and glued the other side, making the material fit tight around the foam board.

I had some rafia, so I glued that to the back of the board. Make sure you glue it well so it doesn't pull off when you hang it on the wall.

I also had some extra ornaments that I bought at the Dollar Tree last year for a pinterest project that was a major fail. Just a little extra something.

And voila! A cute card holder that I can pin all our Christmas cards to. It's hanging in our living room for everyone to see!

I am really surprised that I actually love how it turned out. That never happens when I get crafty!

After I finished a short Christmas picture session with our good friends, the hub & I went to a quick dinner & decided it was a good time for Christmas Tree Lane!

Here's one of my favorite pics from the afternoon

We love them!

I've grown up going to my hometown's Christmas Tree Lane, but nothing compares to the one where we live now!

Found out last night that it's the longest Christmas Tree Lane in the WORLD! Amazing! We love gong every year. This is their 90th year and there is no city financial support, it is run strictly off of donations and a group of people get together every year and string the lights in all the cedar trees and each house is responsible to do their own lighting. You can also tune your radio to a certain station and hear "Christmas Tree Lane" music. I love it!

Here are some pictures...a lot of them. :)

The entrance

AND THE GRAND FINALE!!

This is the last house on the street, and boy oh boy, they go all out.

So, many of you have probably heard about the high speed rail coming to good ol' California.

Last week we got a letter in the mail from an attorney that was advertising their services to help us get our property appraised before the High Speed Rail Authority comes at us. We haven't had any 'official' documents sent to us saying that they are for sure going to take our home and our land, but we are always getting information flyers about the HSR I know we are extremely close to the boundary line, if not within it. In the past our place has been on lists that show properties that they are taking and then the next one we get we are safe. It keeps changing every other week.

I tried to do some research this morning on the current standings and there really is no good information out there. All the newspapers are just opinions and he said she said crap and the HSRA website really doesn't have a whole lot of updated information. I think they are keeping us all in the dark as much as possible so there is less to fight against. However, the number of people sueing the HSRA is huge, which is just continuing to set back the date when they would like to break ground.

So I guess we'll find out if they are taking out place when the show up with a million dollar offer. Hah.

Our only hope is that IF they do decide they want our place...lets just hope they take the whole 10 acres and not the back 100 feet or something stupid. We are pretty darn close to the tracks that they are going to build it along, so I have a feeling, we are in for some trouble.

No matter where we stand on the list of victims, it doesn't change the fact that this stupid thing is going to take thousands and thousands of acres of agriculture land. I don't see how that is beneficial since CA is THE largest producer of food in the nation.

So I leave you with this. It pretty much sums up the feels of every single farmer in CA...and a alot of other people that actually have some common sense.

If you think this whole high speed rail boondoggle is a great idea, I'd love to hear why exactly you think removing thousands of acres of food producing land is a good idea.

About Me

We are a grape growing, sheep raising, newlywed couple enjoying our new (old) house in the country. Keep up with what is going on around our place as we fix up our house, grow our grapes and raise our sheep. There's never a lack of things to do around here!